TALK: WORK @ CREATIVE MORNINGS

 

Position: Speaker.

Creative Mornings is a breakfast lecture series for the creative community. I was invited to participate at their sessions in Guadalajara, Jalisco. The subject was one of my favorites: WORK.

It was nice to be back in Guadalajara, the city where I studied university and where I also started working as a producer. Talking infront of a Public is always challenging for me as I’m so used to be behind the scenes. But I like to share my experiences with others so I guess in that sense it was fun and giving to be there and to participate in this incredible network of inspiring people.

 

Below you can find the whole conference in Spanish though. Maybe one day I get myself to make subtitles to it, until now... if you can...enjoy!

 

I even created a play list for the occasion in case you need some inspiration to WORK IT!

PROJECT: Fabriken, Sweden's first maker-space

Position: Project Manager, concept developer and content creator.

Fabriken, now called Malmö Makerspace, was Sweden's first Makerspace, started as an experiment with a strong pull from Malmö University. In the beginning Fabriken was managed just by a group of people that gathered and experimented with the machines, but we realized that the space and the machines were deteriorating and we needed to find a way to make the project sustainable. We went through a deep cleaning and process of renovation and in August 2013 we opened again with a new membership system, several new machines and a unique partnership with the company Arduino Verkstad that helped us to continue to be first with the latest technologies.

Part of my work with the project was to lead the renovation and the changes made in the methodology of Fabriken as well as the partnerships. The membership based workshop allowed many of the members learn how to use machines such as laser-cutter, 3D printer and CNC-Miller. We also created workshops where we mixed crafts and technology both for children and adults. 

As a project manager for Fabriken I get even to work with a fantastic team of people that were key to the development of Fabriken becoming not Swedens first Makerspace, but the best!

As a part of the project we were interested in finding comercial partners, Conrad Elektronik gave us a sponsorship in exchange of content creation, and these are some of the videos we created for them:

PROJECT: HEMMABYGGE - The finest huts

Design by: Caroline Andersson

Design by: Caroline Andersson

Do you remember when you were small and built your own little houses with pillows, cloth, your moms furniture, wood or anything else you could use to create your own little hut… or KOJA like you call it in Swedish.

I went to Gothenburg with my colleague looking for inspiration. I found this gallery that was showing an exhibition about huts: “Come and see what people have built” When I get there I only see small photos on a white wall that people sent showing their huts. I got so disappointed so I thought I would make my own exhibition and invite some people to build their dream hut. 

We called it HEMMABYGGE (homemade). Around 24 artists, carpenters, designers, musicians and interactive designers from Malmo, Gothenburg and Stockholm were working with 10 projects.   They had a few days to design and order the material they would need and they got one week to build their hut. We gave them also a small budget they managed themselves to buy other objects or special stuff that was not in the ordinary building material that we bought. Then the public could vote for their favorite hut, the winner would get a gift card to buy material and tools for future building. People worked day and night and they created really nice stuff, each hut had its own “personality”.

The press coverage was excellent; we had TV and all the important newspapers from Malmo. The Swedish artist Vit Päls performed at the opening. The exhibition was open for a week and there was people constantly visiting in the whole time.

 This project was co-produced with my great friend, creative producer: Caroline Andersson.


PROJECT: Container Library

The Container Library was an amazing project that I really enjoyed working on. The City Library of Malmö was looking to attract more people during the summer, where usually everyone wants to sit outside and enjoy the good weather. They were also looking to attract a younger public. A new skatepark had just opened in town: Stapelbäddsparken. They found this place an excellent arena to try to create an outdoor alternative library to attract the kids that wanted to rest from skating as well as the parents that were there siting waiting for their kids.

So the library of Malmö and the organization of Stapelbäddsparken knew they wanted to create this library in a 12ft old container and they invited me to lead the project creating the whole concept as well as produce it. I literally got an empty container and I had to design everything from opening a door, to electric installation, decoration and program. I work closely with thee library team to decide which books and magazines people was gonna have access to. They were mainly inspired by street and skateboarding culture. We had a whole program of activities for the summer and we even employed teenagers through the summer-work program that the city had, to help us out.

We continued with the projects 3 more summers, we renewed the concept every year, one year we called it Cultural container and it was more focused on kids creating content, we facilitated cameras and computers so they could create their own skate videos, we had video games, all kinds of workshops related with creating, manga, origami, animation and indie aerobics. The concept was later brought to Denmark as well.